The Journey is the Destination

 

“Feels Like Home to me, feels like home to me,

Feels like I’m all the way back where I come from.

Feels Like Home to me, Feels Like Home to me

Feels like I’m all the way back where I belong” – Bonnie Raitt, Feels like Home

You can never go home again, but it sure felt like home to me this past week.  Brother Rob was down from Juneau with his two girls, Anna and Marian, and Miss Pam and Son Rob and I went on a journey down memory lane. Our family used to camp on the Blue Ridge Parkway and Skyline Drive up until we were 12 years old, so Rob and I decided it would be fun to take our families there.

We entered the Parkway at Fancy Gap, milepost 200 and drove north into Virginia, stopping at Mabry Mill and at most of the overlooks along the way. Rain threatened, so we postponed camping and stayed at the Peaks of Otter Lodge, milepost 83.

We had dinner in the dining room there and the Virginia ham croquettes were the favorite. When we camp, we like to take walks in the woods (otherwise known as Miss Pam’s guided tours of the universe) and the walks near the Lodge were delightful, especially when we saw deer.

The next morning, it was on to Otter Creek campground at milepost 63 and more nature walks and camping. When we were young, our family camped there and I still remember gasping for breath while swimming in that cold, mountain creek. We got the site right next to the creek and the next day, took the 2.4-mile hike down to Otter Lake, just above the James River. What could be more delightful than a swim in a cold creek after a hot summer afternoon hike?

The whole time we were taking walks, we were trying to convince Son Rob that it is the journey of Life that is important, not the destination (which was, the last time I checked, death!) But he is fourteen and Pam and I are currently the stupidest people in the world and, besides, I was mostly trying to convince myself of the truth of this anyway.

So as we walked down the path beside Otter creek, I mulled this journey/destination thing over and over and before long the truth of it just kind of dawned on me that ……well some truth just dawned on me, something about knowing that retracing these steps from my childhood wouldn’t lead to any destination, that it was the process of doing so that held the magic, that could lead me back to my spirit. I can’t remember exactly.

Anyway, Brother Rob and I weren’t little kids again like I had hoped, we were the Dads on this leg of the Journey, but it was fun any way. The next morning the Alaskan Sewards had to move on to Richmond and Delaware and Son Rob suggested that the Southern Sewards stay another day and so we did.

The next day Pam and Rob and I drove up to Waynesboro, Virginia, near Rockfish Gap in the Blue Ridge Mountains, at milepost 0 on the Parkway. My family called this area Home until I was 12 years old and I remembered a carefree string of days and seasons filled with laughter and sunshine. We used to wake up, pull on our jeans t-shirts and tennis shoes and run down to the barn in a field nearby. There we would ride the ponies that some dad was nice enough to let us ride, and that was the place I wanted to see again, albeit with larger and older eyes.

Miss Pam spotted Westwood Elementary, the school I attended on the first day of first grade, and on the day John Kennedy was assassinated, and on the last day of school for six summers. (No more pencils, no more books, no more teacher’s dirty looks!) From there it was easy to retrace my steps for the mile that we walked home every day.

There was the retaining wall that my dad built over 30 years ago. And we were using the same camping kitchen on this trip that he had made and used in those same mountains over 34 years ago. I guess Dad makes things that last. Then we drove around until we got near the field and barn where the ponies were kept (remember King and Queenie and Blackie, guys?) I hopped out of the car and crossed a backyard (nice doggie, easy now doggie) and there it was:

I know it’s just a barn to you. Just a pastoral scene like a million others. But to me it is the site of my becoming, witness to a long part of my life, and mother of my soul. The mountains you see in the background whisper my wordless name in the afternoon breeze and call me home year after year after year. The trees have my hand and footprints on the rough bark of their branches. The blue Shenandoah sky carries the aroma of straw and twine, honeysuckle and wildflowers.  Little kids named Bobby and Becky and Andy, Dickie and Robbie, Mike and Dave still wander these hills, in my heart. The sounds of their laughter come to me in dreams and their shining faces flitter through my waking thoughts.

And all this flooded back as I stood on this hill and snapped this photograph. It floods back to me as I sit here typing and gazing at this scene. As my brothers and parents read this, it will flood back for them too, I just know it in my heart (remember who we were then, guys?). And as you read this, if you will give it a minute or two, those scenes from your early beginnings will come back to you.

No I couldn’t go home again. But home came back to me for a little while, from way back in the years, to touch my heart again.

Then our journey continued as before. We had lunch in Waynesboro, and then drove south down the parkway to Sherando Lake, where we brothers used to swim. But I was already the dad again by that time, and Son Rob was the boy in that scene. And all the while Miss Pam bore witness and understood, and listened to my tale of long ago. Such a wise old soul she has, she knew all along I could never go home again. I was already there.

Dave Seward

June 2000